It is plausible to me that there are some low opportunity cost actions that might make it way more likely that certain people will work on guesses that are plausible candidates for our top (or close to the top) guesses in the next 50 years who, otherwise, wouldn’t engage with effective altruism.[1]
For example, how existing community organizers manage certain conversations can make a really big difference to some people’s lasting impressions of effective altruism.
Consider a person who comes to a group who is sceptical of the top causes we propose but uses the ITN framework to make a case for another cause that they believe is more promising by EA lights.
There are many ways to respond to this person. One is to make it clear that you think that this person just hasn’t thought about it enough, or they would just come to the same conclusion as existing people in the effective altruism community. Another is to give false encouragement, overstating the extent of your agreement for the sake of making this person, who you disagree with, feel welcome. A skilled community builder with the right mindset can, perhaps, navigate between the above two reactions. They might use this as an opportunity to really reinforce the EA mindset/thinking tools that this person is demonstrating (which is awesome!) and then give some pushback where pushback is due.[2]
There are also some higher opportunity cost actions to achieve this inclusivity, including the ones you discussed (but this doesn’t seem what Luke was advocating for, see his reply[3]).
This seems to get the benefit, if done successfully, of not only their work but having another person who might be able to communicate the core idea of effective altruism with high fidelity to many others they meet over their entire career with a sphere of people we might not otherwise reach.
Ideally, pushback is just on one part at a time. The shotgun method rarely leads to a constructive conversation and it’s hard to resolve all cruxes in a single conversation. The goal might be just to find one to resolve for now (maybe even a smaller one than the one that the conversation started out with) and hopefully they’ll enjoy the conversation enough to come back to another event to resolve a second.
I think it’s also worth acknowledging 1) that we have spent a decade steelmanning our views, and that sometimes it takes a lot of time to build up new ideas (see butterfly ideas), which won’t get built up if no one makes that investment but also 2) people have spent 10 years thinking hard about the “how to help others as much as possible” question so it is definitely worth some investment to get an understanding of why these people think there is a case for these existing causes.
Thanks Sophia! That example is very much the kind of thing I’m talking about. IMHO it’s pretty low cost and high value for us to try and communicate in this way (and would attract more people with a scout mindset which I think would be very good).
It is plausible to me that there are some low opportunity cost actions that might make it way more likely that certain people will work on guesses that are plausible candidates for our top (or close to the top) guesses in the next 50 years who, otherwise, wouldn’t engage with effective altruism.[1]
For example, how existing community organizers manage certain conversations can make a really big difference to some people’s lasting impressions of effective altruism.
Consider a person who comes to a group who is sceptical of the top causes we propose but uses the ITN framework to make a case for another cause that they believe is more promising by EA lights.
There are many ways to respond to this person. One is to make it clear that you think that this person just hasn’t thought about it enough, or they would just come to the same conclusion as existing people in the effective altruism community. Another is to give false encouragement, overstating the extent of your agreement for the sake of making this person, who you disagree with, feel welcome. A skilled community builder with the right mindset can, perhaps, navigate between the above two reactions. They might use this as an opportunity to really reinforce the EA mindset/thinking tools that this person is demonstrating (which is awesome!) and then give some pushback where pushback is due.[2]
There are also some higher opportunity cost actions to achieve this inclusivity, including the ones you discussed (but this doesn’t seem what Luke was advocating for, see his reply [3]).
This seems to get the benefit, if done successfully, of not only their work but having another person who might be able to communicate the core idea of effective altruism with high fidelity to many others they meet over their entire career with a sphere of people we might not otherwise reach.
Ideally, pushback is just on one part at a time. The shotgun method rarely leads to a constructive conversation and it’s hard to resolve all cruxes in a single conversation. The goal might be just to find one to resolve for now (maybe even a smaller one than the one that the conversation started out with) and hopefully they’ll enjoy the conversation enough to come back to another event to resolve a second.
I think it’s also worth acknowledging 1) that we have spent a decade steelmanning our views, and that sometimes it takes a lot of time to build up new ideas (see butterfly ideas), which won’t get built up if no one makes that investment but also 2) people have spent 10 years thinking hard about the “how to help others as much as possible” question so it is definitely worth some investment to get an understanding of why these people think there is a case for these existing causes.
maybe this whole comment should be a reply to Luke’s reply but moving this comment is a tad annoying so hopefully it is forgivable to leave it here 🌞.
Thanks Sophia! That example is very much the kind of thing I’m talking about. IMHO it’s pretty low cost and high value for us to try and communicate in this way (and would attract more people with a scout mindset which I think would be very good).
🌞